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Union Square Market to Reopen This Week

By Glenn Collins November 13, 2012 10:29 amNovember 13, 2012 10:29 am

Photo

Credit Angel Franco/The New York Times

Call it the ghost market: for 16 days, the bustling four-day-a-week Union Square Greenmarket has been displaced by emergency workers from Con Edison and utility crews from Alabama, Georgia and Pennsylvania who have used the park as a staging area.

At last, that is scheduled to change on Wednesday – or, if all is not ready, Friday – when the disaster crews will be relocated and a full complement of 40 to 80 farmers returns. The city’s Office of Emergency Management, Con Ed and the city parks department said they would come to a decision about the move on Tuesday. The status of the Greenmarket will be listed on its Web site.

“We are deeply appreciative that these workers have been here,” said Michael Hurwitz, director of the city’s Greenmarkets, “but we very much want to go home.”

On Nov. 3, a Saturday, a contingent of 35 Union Square farmers found their way to a temporary location in Madison Square Park that they have continued to use. “The farmers were grateful to be there,” Mr. Hurwitz said, “but they lost several million dollars during the last couple of weeks.”

The 36-year-old Union Square market is open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; it attracts 300,000 people on a typical Saturday. About 45 farmers take 70 stands on Mondays, and 85 farmers take 120 stands on Saturdays.

After the storm, many parks were closed for safety reasons, and some Greenmarket sites had been inundated or lost electric power. But by Nov. 1, nine Greenmarkets were up and running. Currently, 52 of the 54 markets are fully operational. (The two that haven’t reopened are in Union Square and Stuyvesant Town, near the Con Ed substation that suffered an explosion.) And both of the Greenmarkets on hard-hit Staten Island are back up and running as well.

As for the return to Union Square, “we hope we made some new friends in Madison Square Park,” Mr. Hurwitz said, “and we hope they’ll be walking down to Union Square once we’re back.”